A lot of blogs I’ve been reading lately and people from the online industry alike, with whom I’ve had the chance of interacting, believe twitter is today’s hot, new thing – and rightfully so. You only need a few minutes with it to realize it’s pure genius! It’s simple, effective and easy to use. Yes, the hype can sometimes be exhausting, since it’s really hard finding a blog these days without having at least one twitter related post in their past month archives, but even with all this in mind, the hype is justified.

What I want to post about today is not an ode to twitter, though, praising and marveling how great twitter is, twitter here and twitter there – no. What I do want to talk about today is the miss conception that twitter has made blogging obsolete, unfashionable or even unpractical (I saw someone say this on twitter some time ago, so you can imagine).

Back in the 19th century, there lived a very influential Italian economist, by the name of Vilfredo Pareto, whose legacy spans well through out present day. His most notable achievement was the development of, what’s today commonly know as, the Pareto principle or “law of the vital few.” What makes this principle so important is the fact that it provided a bridge between economics and sociology, by showing how, in general, only ~20% of the input is responsible for ~80% of the output in some aspects of our lives.

More clearly, with a minimum amount of effort you can come up with most of your desired results. A few short examples:

• 20% of the world’s population control 80% of its income.
• 20% of a company’s workers produce are responsible for 80% of its performance.
• 20% of the bugs are responsible for 80% of system crashes.
• 20% of clients are responsible for 80% of sales.
• 20% of the world’s newspapers are read by 80% of the population.
• 20% of a city’s streets are responsible for 80% of the traffic.
• 20% of criminals are responsible for 80% of the total crimes.
• 20% of the web’s sites produce 80% of its traffic.

And we could go on forever. Just think about learning a new language, after a few months you’ll probably be able to have a conversation with someone in a foreign language, but by no means will be fluent – that takes a lot more effort.

However, keep in mind this is not a general truth, as the 80/20 principle does not apply to all circumstances, by no means. It’s pretty clear, though, that we can learn a great deal from its microeconomics applications and become more productive individuals or … bloggers.

Does Perfectionism And Blogging Mix Well?

Now, I’m pretty spread even on this. I’m a perfectionist by nature. I always strive for excellence in everything I do. I don’t like to post on a blog, code something or finish a design until I’m really, really pleased with it. At the end of the day, everyone’s happy, because I delivered above average work, but when you look back things aren’t so gloomy.

Firstly, there’s the huge amount of time you dedicate to completing a task, and then there’s of course  a somewhat inner perfectionist’s disappointment. This is because you can never deliver something totally flawless – there’s always something better, there’s always someone smarter. Practically the word “perfect” is as abstract as one could possibly be.

Let’s take a look at perfectionism and Pareto from a blogging perspective, though.

A Minimalistic Take On Blogging

Photo by walter*sylvia

1. “Less is More.” Why use a couple hundred words to make a point, when you can just as well do it over a sentence or two? Of course, an opinion is never valid without lack of arguments to back it up, but people all too often over-complicate things when there’s really no reason to.Don’t stuff up you’re reviews with redundant information, if you don’t believe it’s really relevant or helpful for a potential reader. Don’t add unnecessary figures to your analysis, if you don’t believe it provides a better understanding from behalf of the reader. It’s blogging. It’s supposed to be simple!
2. Formatting. Effectively use paragraphing formatting, numbered or unordered lists, text formatting (bold to stand out, italic to emphasize, blockquotes for citations, <H3> or <H1> tags for headings and so on) to highlight what’s important and for better readability in your posts.
3. Focus. Don’t stray off your subjects too much and try to keep things as relevant as possible. The internet is a very big place and provides the medium for one to easily get distracted or influenced. Block all the irrelevant doodles from your head and clear your mind, so that you can continuously have a flow of ideas. Oh, and remeber – don’t stop typing. Write! Write! Write!Quick tip #1: open your dashboard and start writing for no more than 10 minutes. Don’t reference anything, don’t format the text, just write – for now. After that you can come back and revise it. This will stop you from daydreaming and start writing already!
   Quick tip #2: if it’s an extensive post of 1000+ words strong, try to quickly visualize it in your head, from introduction, to body, to conclusions. Write on a piece of paper the headlines, the main ideas behind your biggest points and, most importantly (type it in CAPITALS and make it BIG), what you hope to achieve with your post. Do you want people to leave with a fresh dose of knowledge? Do you want to create awareness over a particular subject? You name it.
4. An image can speak a thousand words. It’s so easy making a point or instantiating a subject with images. Want to write about how much fun you had during that ski trip in the Alps? Post some photos. Need to do a write-up on your company’s corporate blog? Post some charts, brand logos, relevant imagery and so on. I’ve written more on the subject previously, so reference the post for more info. Much of the same effect can be attained with videos, slides or podcasts.
5. Advertising. On our network of blogs, about 80% of all our income comes from one source, one advertiser which has only 20% of our inventory reserved. This is called premium advertising. When we realized this, we almost immediately scrapped all the other advertisers. Why? Because the rest of 80% of our ad inventory was making us pennies – cheap CPM and CPC networks. ‘Hey, it’s still money right?‘ No! There’s no need to further disrupt design aesthetics and over all vibe with 2 dime ads.Further more, with your inventory empty you can wait for a potential quality advertiser and attempt to sell a percentage of that inventory at a fair price. It’s hard to do that when the advertiser sees that in the position of his desired ad lies adsense or some other form of low-commission network. And this doesn’t necessarily apply to big scoring advertisers. If something around 80% of your revenue is provided only by an advertiser, you need to seriously think about whether you want or not to keep the other advertisers that make up the rest of 20%.
6. Distractions. On really serious, niche blogs that pump out valuable content on a regular basis, much of the time reserved to blogging is spent on research. If you also spend part of time goofing around, surfing 20 tabs at the same time, talking on the phone and other interfering activities, your ‘research time,’ and thus post completion time, will greatly increase.To be efficient, keep your working environment as isolated as possible from any distractions. Turn off your TV, phone and even internet connection (oohhhhh! spooky!). Just save your tabs that aid you in your post research and unplugg the damn thing, this way you want be tempted to check out twitter, youtube, RSS reader or any other form of distraction from your work.
7. Comments. I’ve stressed this countless times before – commenting is one of the most important steps towards building and keeping a popular blog. It’s the first step to community building.Comment on other blogs as well as reply to your own in-house comments addressed to you, in one way or the other, and you’ll be making the first step to greatness. However, again, don’t stray off subjects, don’t go round replying in the comment area with a thousand word analysis or debunking (it’s a lot better if you do it on your own blog – you’ve got a lot more space … and sympathy), because, frankly, no one’s going to read it. You’re wasting everybody’s time.  A bit of etiquette, as a reminder.

Why Perfectionism Can Be a BLESSING!

Photo by freddiemarriage

80% of your output comes from 20% of your input – this is how Pareto’s principle basically works. However, in life only those who step well beyond that 20% margin become truly successful. These are the people that through their hard work and perseverance manage to achieve greatness. They’re the ones who launch successful start-ups, write best-sellers, hit home-runs, win Nobel prizes. They’re the one who work 12 hours a day or more and love every second of it!

Now, those who managed to reach such a level that they can balance both hard work and efficiency are the leader of tomorrow. Blogging was and is meant to be simple, but if you want to make a difference, to rise above the majority (remember, there are millions of blogs out there), you’ll have to present yourself differently and this requires a bit more than 20% of your efforts.

P.S. It’s been SIX months since I’ve last published my last post on LAOB. No, I’m not dead, as one might notice from my regularly updated twitter stream, nor did I ambandoned the blog. I simply went through a combination of professional and personal difficulties, that seem to have gotten straighten out now. Expect the blog to get updated a few times a month from now on. A big thank you to all of you who’ve still kept the blog in your RSS feed, despite the inactivity.

A while back I wrote two in depth articles on blog monetization, that got really well received and went popular. One tackled almost all the ways a blogger can approach his ad inventor, while the other offered a backdoor on how to avoid middle man commissions and how to sell ads directly. However, all these talks about blog monetization, making money online and all that mambo jambo, can cause most bloggers to deviate from their blog’s main goal, to other, more corporate, intentions. Money talks, and small time bloggers can get engulfed pretty easily.

Ads can make a blog seem nontransparent or ill intended, when blog posts are concerned, simply because they run money off of its content. It seems a bit unreal, but a lot of people feel very cheated away when reading blogs with ads on it. Few actually take in consideration hosting bills or even the obvious issue, such as a blogger’s time. Actually, if you run a blog with no ads, and then suddenly revert to monetized action, you could actually have a mutiny on your hands!

So, let’s try to look at an alternative: an ad free blog. Sounds crazy, right? Well, in a ever expanding blogosphere, that’s trying to get more “pro” by the day, an ad free blog may startle some as a novelty. You’ll be surprised, however, how many great blogs out there don’t run any kind of ads, how some ads can actually make you LOSE money and how displaying no actual advertising can still bring a decent income. All will be unraveled soon.

Why Monetization May Not Be Healthy For Your Blog

Photo by Stuck in Customs.

OK, first, let me clear some things out. I don’t have anything against ads, moreover I perfectly understand why people would result to ads. After all, it would be only hypocritical of me to bash blogs that run ads, when I myself run 10+ such monetized blogs, down at my own network.

Now that we’ve disclaimed the discussion, lets analyze a few issues that usually happen with poorly monetized blogs, with absolutely no business plan in mind. Here’s a word of advice: if you want to make money out of blogging, you better be very good and get prepared to work a lot! A lot of people get fueled by various success stories of self-taught bloggers, who make as much as four-five figures. Work at home moms, regular 9 to 5 average Joes etc, people who come from all sorts of backgrounds and professions. This is part of the charm of blogging, anyone can do it, but not anyone can make a living out of it.

Let’s face it, these success stories that you see posted over at sites like ProBlogger are rare! One in a few thousand people actually make a decent income out of it, and it’s gonna get even more difficult. Why? Because thousands of new blogs pop-out everyday, and this leads to market saturation, and this, in term, leads to lower advertising rates.

I’ve waited about 6 months for my first adsense check a few years back, when I first started blogging. Yeah, 6 months for a meager 100$. Don’t forget it’s a lot harder now, as opposed to, let’s say, 2-3 years back. I’ve heard a lot of people saying they’ve waited as much as 12 months for their adsense to cash in. Let’s look at the CPM model, too. At a normal CPM rate of 1$ per thousand impression, a blogger would need about 100k hits per month to make 100$, which, let’s face it, is both not much at all and hard to achieve. A normal mid-trafficked blog has a few thousand impressions per day, working pass that requires a heck of a lot of work. Yeah, you can add multiple banners (leaderboards, skyscrapers, blocks etc.), but in the process you may risk over-flooding your blog with commercial ads.

Sure, after 200k uniques a month, the difference is enormous. A blog that has traffic in the 200-300k range can get 5-6$ CPMs or even two figures, because they appeal to a larger audience. How many of you have such blogs? I thought so.

I’m sure, most of you will say there’s nothing wrong in adding a few ads, even though they don’t actually make nothing out of it. “A few extra dollars, can’t hurt. Right?” “You’re taking, not giving.” OK, but is it worth selling yourself out for a fist full of dollars? No, it’s not, because once with those ads you’re be also be making sacrifices. If the benefits don’t out weigh the downfalls, why should you endeavor in the first place?

Don’t forget, both CPC (adsense) and CPM  advertisers require a certain treshold before performing the payment. Millions of adsense publishers haven’t been payed because they haven’t reached the respective threshold, this means that’s dead money – it can’t circulate. The ad networks know this and make a killing off of it.

Here’s just a few downfalls to using conventional advertising.

• Credibility. You can argue with me as much as you want, but the truth is advertisement will hurt your blog’s credibility. How come? Well, once you put advertisement, questions can begin to be pondered. Are you writing for the community or the advertisers? Let’s not forget about the advertisers themselves. Do you support the respective advertisers or products? If not, they could get into some trouble, if a complaint arises or one of your readers is insatisfied with one of the products bought from your ads. It’s complicated.
• Targeting. Most ads served by ad networks (not sold directly to the blogger) are completely bogus and unfocused to the blogger’s niche. Smileys, emoticons, ringtones, flashy text, ‘zomege click here to win a gazillion dollars etc.’ kind of ads harm the over all user experience, and, in consequence, your blog as well.
• Aethetics. While some ads, like the ones from Intel or Apple are just a pleasure to watch (read click), 99% of the rest are totally lameass. They break your sidebars, interupt your design’s natural flow, they’re distracting etc. Lately, ads are getting more interesting and smarter, because people are getting more and more internet savvy, and, in term, become more and more ad blind. However, before ads can really become effective and competitive, aestethic-wise, there’s still a long way to go.

An Alternative View on How Your Blog Can Provide An Income

Hey, just because your blog doesn’t have any kind of visible, conventional advertisement present, it doesn’t mean you can’t make any money from your blog. Far from it. The only problem with the following alternative income stream I’m going to list soon, is that your blog needs to have a stable, loyal readership formed, otherwise you won’t manage to turn a profit. Actually, if you can’t manage to build a readership, you’ll blog will never grow/become popular. So, like it or not, you’ll have to concentrate on forming a community around your blog anyway.

1. Consultancy. If your blog’s been around for long enough, and if it’s relatively popular enough (decent subscribers numbers, traffic stats, post comments etc. I won’t detail on numbers, because they vary from nice to niche), changes are you’ll be regarded as an expert in your field. This means people will go to you, when they have questions or various issues. Why not leverage this new found status? A lof o people, including myself, pride themselves with the “consultant” etiquette, and offer counsel to people on how to improve their business, personality or life. Life coaches have been doing this for decades, so there’s no reason why you can’t do it as well. Here, on my blog, I have a consultancy page, where I list my services to any blogger who wishes to seek counsel in the field of blogging and social media. People who visit the blog for the first time or long time readers, alike, can visit the respective page and hire me for a few hours of mentorship.
2. Provide Services. A lot of people use their blogs as a portfolio, where they pitch  various services each of them is good at. A lot of freelance designers, programmers or writers have managed to gain an impressive income thanks to services they provide to clients referred by their blogs. Look at David Airey for example, one of the most famous designers on the web, who’s managed to gather countless clients thanks to his two blogs, DavidAirey.com and LogoDesignLove.com.The key here is to make sure you provide maximum visibility to your services. Set up a portfolio page and link to it from your blog, so that your readers may check it out and eventually contact you for a gig. Be sure to put links to the various websites of companies you’ve previously worked, for testimonials and so on.
3. Sell a(n) book/e-book. You’ve got a following, you’ve somewhat established yourself as an authority, now it’s time to consider writing your own e-book or, if you’ve got a far enough reach, even a genuine, hardcover book. Now, releasing a book, compared to a simple internet ventured e-book, is really tough business. First, your blog needs to be huge, so that your following may guarantee a few hundread/thousand sales, then you need to have some really solid content for it to be approved by a publicist, and so on.

   Let’s face it, writing a book isn’t quite for everyone. Big folks like ProBlogger and Lorrelle Van Fossen were successful with their endeavors, but small timers on the internet like me or you will have a tough time. So, yeah, the easiest, most affordable and accessible solution is, naturally, producing an e-book. Almost everybody writes e-books now, because they’re fairly easy to produce and release. A normal e-book has just 5-6000 words in it, roughly 15-20 hours of work – a more then decent amount of time investement, if you weigh in the benefits. After completion, you just pack it nicely (I suggest hiring a designer to do the front cover and over-all layout of the .pdf), announce its release on your blog, e-mail your friends and other bloggers, make a separate page or website for the e-book, launch an affiliate program and you’re on your way to making some nice money. I just layed out the standard process in a few seconds, but, trust me, it’s a LOT harder then it sounds.

   This is part of the reason I haven’t managed to release an e-book of my own by now – time.I barely find the time to write here a few posts once in a while, imagine me starting working on an e-book. All in do time, though. The e-book shall come, too. But is all the work on an e-book worth it? You bet it is. An e-book sells for something between 5-15$ – it’s your call on how you price it.Think about it. If you’re selling 50 .pdfs in the first month (when you’ll probably sell the most, because of the buzz), you’ll be making something like 500$. After that you can expect selling something between 5-10 copies a month, that’s about 60-100$. Remember this is passive income, and the number of copies sold is only up to you and your marketing skills. Further details on the subject in a future post installment.

4. Donations. Many people overlook this particular source of income, but believe me or not bloggers who don’t give readers the possibility to incentive, are missing out on what’s potentially a pretty good amount of cash. A lot of people misinterpret donations as a lower form of income – as something trivial. That’s because they view donations like begging, which is completely stupid.

   There’s nothing wrong with asking for donations. You’re just appealing your reader’s senses, on whether he wishes to express his appreciation for your work by helping out a bit, financially. Take my donate page as an example, where I give a few reasons on why you, my readers, should donate in the first place. I’ve also added a paypal donate button in the sidebar. The whole process took about 30 minutes, but thanks to it I’ve managed to gain some pretty solid money, which would’ve been otherwise nonexistent. By the way, thank you, guys!

5. Sell a product. Your blog can be a launching platform for basically anything. It would be a pity, not to leverage your blog to the maximum and start selling some of your work, packed as a product. If you’ve got a blog about nutrition, you could sell a 9 weeks diet plan; if you’re a designer, you could sell premium wordpress theme etc. There are a lot of possibilities.
6. Premium content. Charging for accessing a blog is not only unethical, but kinda stupid too. However, if you’ve got certain tools, resources, private community boards and so on, that are of high quality, you can easily charge a membership fee. If the new found premium content is of great value, your readers will swarm, and, through word of mouth, will also bring their friends. If you dig a little big through the internet, you’ll find that membership sites are one most profitable online businesses around!
7. Speak at events. Conferences are loads of fun; I just love them! You’ve got hundreds of people, all who share your own interests, cramped up in a few halls, booths. It’s basically a social bonanza. However, if you’ve established yourself as an authority in your niche, you could have the chance of getting invited by organizers to speak a bit about a certain topic, related to your niche. You’ll get travel, hotel and food expenses covered, as well as, probably, a small salary for your efforts.
8. Job board. More and more people are turning blogs into true portals, with more and more community features that help enhance a blog’s quality and, of course, the overall user experience. Job boards have become an ever common practice lately for big blogs, and more modest one, alike. The beauty of job boards is that it provides multiple win-win situations, which makes them pretty easy to become successful with, if played right. The blogger earns money from the advertiser for posting the job, the job candidate (most likely one of your blog’s readers) gets a new job and the advertiser gets to find a capable man for his business. Everybody’s happy.The secret behind this for it to work, like most blog ‘ad-ons’ (forums, group projects etc.), is to have a very solid community in your blog, otherwise it will become very difficult to turn a profit. Some great job boards from which can get inspiration can be found at ProBlogger and Freelance Switch.
9. Marketplace. How about a social bazaar? You can also add a special section to your blog where people can come to buy or sell various products. If you’re running a tech blog, for example, you can add a marketplace where people can come and post an auction for various used/new tech devices or even websites. In return you can charge a modest sum for every listing, something 1-5$. That may not seem like much, but if you manage to have 1-5 listings a day, across multiple categories, you can manage to turn a pretty penny.
10. Event sponsorships. You can always organize events such as group writing projects or off-line conferences, where you can try to gain some sponsorship. If you’re, for say, organizing a writing competition with a theme like web development, you could ask some top design, out-sourcing or development companies to help out and sponsor the event. Making money off of this is rare and pretty hard, implying a lot of running around, but I’ve still heard people making something decent out of it.
11. Merchandise. Can you say ‘I can haz t-shirtz?’ The famous lol cat blog, icanhazcheezburger.com, that’s been ravaging the internet over the last year or so, have been more then succesful with the monetization efforts, eventually even expading to a whole LOL network of blogs. Great job, guys! Anyway, they’re making a killing out of their blog’s store, where various lol cat apparel can be bought by fans. You can turn this particular success model to your benefit as well, by adopting it. Just plug in a e-cart script like osCommerce and you’re good to go.

Of course you can use all of these techniques together with convetional blog advertisement (banners, links etc.) and make even more money, but the point here is to show that even though you basically keep your blog ad free, you can still make some money.

Why, Really, An Ad Free Blog Rocks

OK, I think I may have deviated a bit from the post’s actual main idea, or title for that matter. So, basically, why should you consider keeping your blog free from advertisement? Because you want your blog, or blogger (if you’re one of those personal branding folk), to be focused. You want your blog’s content to be clean, free and concentrated, with its community at its center. Famous bloggers like Skellie, Seth Godin (he may not be the best examples, but I’m too big of a fan not to include him.), Jeff Atwood (from codinghorror.com) or Lorelle understood this and managed to develop ones of the most popular blogs on the internet, all with out advertisement. Examples of bloggers who have become famous thanks to their neat online journal could continue for on and on, but that’s no important here. What’s important is the principle behind it.

Again, if this article may struck you as being anti-capitalist or something like that, then chill. It’s nothing like this. It’s about choice and alternative information on monetization.

Also, if you’re willing and enjoyed this little post, then please consider voting this story on your favorite social media channel. Diggs, stumbles, twitts, doesn’t matter. Anything is appreciated.

Soft as some song divine, thy story flows.
~ Homer, The Odyssey (bk. XII, l. 566)

Few things are as special and satisfying as a good story. The emotions and feelings you get out of it are quite like nothing else. A story, if well told, can lift you up and transport you to distant lands, distant worlds and even distant times. They’re little escapes from our stressful, quotidian lives, without which we’d simply be hollow. That’s why we can’t really live without stories.

Stories have been part of our lives since the dawn of man. Our forefathers used to gather in groups, around huge campfires in caves, and tell tales of great hunters and animals. A simple look at the graffiti work in the Normandy ancient caves can attest the fact. This continues to present day. We always seek the need to listen to stories, in all forms, be it oral (chats with best mates), written (books, magazines) or visual (movies, shows). However, we also feel the need to share. I think each of us can relate to something that just happened to us, that we’re just dying to tell somebody about. This is the stuff that actually made blogs come to be, the desire to let things out, to voice their deepest emotions/experiences and to, most importantly, to share stories.

However, I feel like the storytelling element in blogs is growing ever thin, with more and more blogs going on a more blunt approach, way too direct and to the point. I read a lot of marketing and tech blogs, and while they’re very good, they don’t really have substance; they all feel somewhat the same. I’ve noticed the same thing in most niches, too. Personal blogs seems to be the only category where bloggers still post in pleasant, story narrative-like environment, and, frankly, that’s really a great pity, because most bloggers don’t know what they’re missing out. People are too busy, they don’t have time for nonsense, they argue. How true that may be, people still enjoy a good story once in a while when reading a blog, even in the most boring of niches.

What We Can Learn From Homer

Hector in the movie Troy (2004). Credits I Speak Film

Homer was a Greek poet and one of the most illuminated minds to have ever graced the Earth, but above all he was a great storyteller. His greatest works, masterpieces Iliad and The Odyssey, still manage to fascinate and baffle its readers to this very day, 3000 years after Homer wrote them! Reading Homer, it feels like you’re right there next to Achilles in the mist of battle, alongside Hector defending the gates of Troy or even ramming for Odysseus on our epic journey back to Greece. Undoubtedly, Homer is a master of the art of storytelling and there’s a lot we can learn from him, especially as bloggers.

1. Be captivating. Everybody hates a boring story. As a blogger, or, if you will, a writer, what you want to do is compel your reader to savor every word you ‘spit out’ and never stop reading your article until he hits the bottom of it. Boredom and unnecessary information are a blogger’s greatest enemies in this situation. Homer said it pretty well actually, “And what so tedious as a twice-told tale.” To achieve this you simply have to be interesting. You don’t have to write the next Iliad, you just need to put it in the right form.
2. Circularity. What I love about Homer’s books is that I feel like everything is connected there. The events, the characters, the locations; all are connected. Let’s take a look at Achilles, the most beloved character of the Iliad. In battle, he was considered to be invincible; no man could come close in defeating him, however, he had one weak spot: his heel (hence the “Achilles heel” expression when vulnerability is put into context). A well placed arrow by Paris hit Achilles’ heel and the latter fell instantly, dead. If you know your ancient Greek mythology well, you’d know that, as a baby boy, Achilles was bathed in the river Styx by his mother, from which he drew his invulnerability, however, during the bathing he was hold by his heel, and, thus, that portion of his body was left untouched by the soothing waters. More or less, blogging is connected to everything around us as well. You can easily reference details of your posts and interlink with other similar work, so that you can build an easy to read, enjoyable and complete article. But this is circularity in blogging at a superficial level; circularity in blogging, at a deeper level, can be experienced when the blogger, the text, his readers and other bloggers are put together.
3. Put things into context. A good story can pop-up in the most unexpected places, sometimes these are quite the most fulfilling ones, however, maybe it’s for the best you limit yourself to writing things in the same field. For example, if you’re writing a blog post on “5 of the most beautiful mountains,” you could include a few words about one of your trips on one of the mountains. It definitely make your text more compelling and will add some flavor to it. Actually, the easiest way you can make a usual, blunt post into a story, is through examples. Examples are invaluable in tutorials or guide works, because they help a great deal in the overall understanding of the text by the reader. So if you’re in the habit of writing these kinds of posts, don’t forget to provide some real life applications.
4. Allegories. Homer used a lot of allegories in his work, very subtlety if may add, coffering new meanings to the seemingly obvious events. Locations, characters and other narrative elements from his story were all given a special meaning, either throw the actual events or even names. Homer used allegories as a tool to present a story that serves another purpose, with a separate meaning. If you’re trying to write intelligent, subtle material about something without effectively mentioning it, allegory, next to irony, could become your best friends.
5. The People. In his works, Homer usually writes about myths in which various people are put in extraordinary situations, from which they heroically come out victorious or tragically defeated. To me, the greatest lesson that he thought me was how limited both men and gods are. Of course, their abilities are remarkable, out of this world, but in the end they were all vulnerable beings and this humanized them. This was a great treat, because every reader could identify with one or more characters from Homer’s work. Strong as Hector, skilled as Achilles, beautiful as Helen, cunning like Agamemnon and so on. As long as you put an emphatic element in your story, you’re just one step away from making a good story.
6. Inductive Writing. This is an ever-present element in Homer’s chapters, although not at all as obvious, as you might find in fables for example. In a nutshell inductive writing is the process in which the writer or storyteller relates a certain experience and at the end he shares a conclusion or a few words of wisdom to the reader, who’s been patient enough to wait through the whole thing. If we were to translate this into blogging, it would simply mean that at the end of a particular posts it’s well sought if you’d also write-up a summary of the article. What we’ve talked about, what we’ve learned, what we can learn in the future and so on. Again, if you’re trying to teach something, this is highly recommended. Repetition and recapitulation is the forefront of methodical learning.
7. Amplification. When writing non-fictional work, relating real life experiences things can tend to get a bit, let’s say, boring. For your post to become captivating, what you need to do is minimize unnecessary details and amplify the most important elements that emphasizes your post’s main idea. Don’t confuse this with exaggeration and lying, though.
8. Enigmatic endings. A few points above I talked about the inductive writing, in which the prolog and epilogue are closely tied together, however, because his poems are so long, chapters end in different ways, often shocking with dramatic turns of events. As a blogger if you continue to write the same kind of posts, your loyal visitors, that read every post you churn out in their Google reader, you have to sometimes flip the side and exit your monotonous writing habits. Now, what you can do is either end your posts in a unexpected manner, which is fairly difficult, after all you’re writing simple blog posts, not novels… or you can leave your readers decide the ending for you, by leaving room for reader engagement. An open ending to a post always brings out the most comments and the discussions sparked often can prove to be more valuable and information-packed then the article itself.
9. Memorability. The Iliad and The Odyssey, Homer’s epic two sister poems, are arguably or not two of the most beautiful stories ever told, overcoming all tests of quality, even the hardest of all tests: time. What made the books so good was simply it’s remarkable, well written and well told stories, detaining the contents of a fantastic world. To sum up the main idea behind this as shortly as possible, bloggers should learn that, if they want to make a difference in the blogosphere or the entire world for that matter (why limit yourself, right?) they have to be memorable, by being remarkable.

Adapting Homeric Storytelling to Modern Day Blogging

The infamous Trojan Horse, a weapon of destruction wrapped up as a gift. Credits Todd S. Klassy

Without a doubt, Homer was one of the greatest storytellers to have lived, but if he were to be living in present day, how would his blog look like? I’m sure he would’ve been a terrific blogger, if it weren’t for little things like…time. Anyway, let’s have a look at a few things Homer would’ve probably applied, if he was a blogger.

• Reader engagement. His writing is terribly emphatic and emotive, fact that made readers feel in the mist of the story; the mark of a true storyteller. However, there was no way for him to get in touch with his “fans.” No means of interaction whatsoever, and from this point of view he was severly limited. Thanks to the 21st century’s greatest marvel so far, the internet, any man can now share his ideas, thoughts, feelings, stories, and get instant feedback on his work, instantly. What bloggers, today, can do surpasses any author/reader relationship in the history of writing. Readers can comment a piece, share their thoughts with the blogger and other fellow readers and give suggestions, while the blogger on the other can respond as well though commenting, ask questions through posts, organize group projects, make polls, virtually a bundle of stuff Homer himself would’ve proud to have.
• Moving beyond words. Words aren’t the only way to tell a story, actually the more channels a story is propagated on, the greater its reach will be. Bloggers have a fast array of tools to permit them to share stories with ease, beyond written words. Rapidly growing phenomenons like podcasts and video-blogs are a perfect way of getting your story out, as a good alternative to written text, and every blogger should at least try them out every once every once in while.
• Crafting its form. A blogger can complete a story on all possible channel. Besides, obviously, writing it, he can add photos, sound, video and by doing so, surrounded by a beautiful blog design, he provides a whole different level of reader experience. Imagine living through a story by reading it on a book and then watching the movie made after it. Obviously, you’ll both have a better understanding of the story, as well as more elaborated experience. Similar practices are made by bloggers all around the world. For example you can write-up post about something that’s relevant to you, whatever, and then make a podcast on the same subject were you discuss the same stuff you approached in written form, but this time you can also take reader questions and have live engagements with the readers (if you’re a fan of live podcast). This works especially good with reviews, where bloggers post their ideas about a book, record or movie and then upload a video version of the review, to add further depth to the critique. A blog that does this exteremly well is themovieblog.com, a personal favorite.
• Promotion. In ancient times the only way to narrate a story was through oral form. Few people knew how to read or write, and thus the only a story could be perpetuated and, ultimately, preserved was through oral narrations, or what marketers would call today word-of-mouth. Homers works were truly remarkable, but very difficult as well. It’s amazing when you think about it how spokesmen would memorize hundreds of pages, so that the story could be shared and live on in the hearts of fellow men for thousands of years. Bloggers have no such troubles. With so many means of promotion, today, it’s now fairly easy to get something, even remotely interesting, out. You’ve got forums, social media, word-of-mouth, even other blogs. The possibilities to promote your blogs are highly multiple, you only need a solid based of content.

[digg-reddit-me]Storytelling has been one of the basis of human entertainment, learning and knowledge since the beginning of articulate speech, so, evidently, it has become a part a important part of our lives. Why not make it a part of our virtual lives as well? Part of our most sacred online possessions, our blogs. Whether or not blogging is the next level of storytelling in the 21 century is a hard question to put, but without a doubt, when used properly, storytelling can spark up the most beautiful, enjoyable blog posts. It’s the secret sauce of blogging, if you will. Anyway, go now! Write a story, capture a moment in time and start a fruitful conversation.

Thoughts? Ideas? Anything? I’ll be glad to hear and comment your reactions alongside you.

Oh, and if you enjoyed this article, then please consider stumbling, digging or even saving this little post to your del.icio.us account. Lets make this story big! Thank you, again!

Vivid images are like a beautiful melody that speaks to you on an emotional level. It bypasses your logic centers and even your intellect and goes to a different part of the brain. ~ Steve Bochco, popular TV producer.

One of the most common things people e-mail me, besides the usual ‘great post’ and all, is how much they enjoyed the way I blend images, together with my writing and form an easy to digest, eclectic post. Clearly, images make a profound role in each of my posts, and I can’t see any reason why you shouldn’t reap it’s benefits as well.

Blogging isn’t just about writing. It’s a bit more demanding then that, I’m afraid. A good blogger has to make his presence felt and convey his message as best as he can and through as many channels as possible. By mixing in words with visuals stimuluses, you’re providing a whole different reading experience, as well as enhancing the broadcasted message.

There’s are literary millions of blogs out there, with quite possibly millions of posts everyday. How can you possibly expect to stand out or be unique? Standing out is, thus, crucial, and the images in posts, alongside the writing of course, provide the necessary means in doing just that.

Why Should I Use Images In Posts?

Photo by neonhil

Some of you may feel like images in posts are redundant, a waste of bandwidth, that only succeed in distracting the readers, but from my point of view you’re plain wrong. And I’ll tell you why too, simply by laying some basic and evident benefits of using them. A few lines in and I’m sure you’ll most definitely chance your mindset or at least have second thoughts.

1. Grab attention. Internet users nowadays have the attention span of a 3 year old, and wait till you see the traffic from social media. If they stay for more then 5 seconds on your blog, you should immediately sacrifice a virgin to show your appreciation. Really now, there’s no secret bounce rates are getting higher and higher, and what’s left for blogger is to use all they’re available resource to flag the reader and say: ‘Hey! I’m worth reading‘ or ‘Hey! I look somewhat interesting, might as well check me out.” Images are great for this. Just think about it for a second. How many times did you stumble across a blog, gazed upon a really significant image, that literary caught your eye, and then continued reading the respective blog post? I know I do it, and I know you do it too, because it’s just normal. It’s in our nature to do it, because our brain is highly receptive to visual stimuli. That’s why I always like to post a representative image in every post, before the any sign of written content is in sight. This is, of course, not a rule or anything, it’s how I ‘roll.’

   Also I think it’s important to stress out that images pose a crucial role when targeting RSS readers. Because there’s actually no design involved in the feed reader software, your post’s images and title are the ones that can make the difference from ‘just another post in my reader’, to ‘a good read I had during my morning coffee.’

2. Keep attention. Images not only help attract visitor’s attention, but they can also keep it. This especially applies in the case of more lengthy posts. Remember what I said about people’s attention span a few lines above, right? Well further adding images, through out your post, in “key spots” will definitely decrease your bounce rates, because it brakes the text and makes the readers more alert. What are the key spots? Right after subheading and heading or right after you start an important paragraph will definitely do.
3. Scannability. Internet surfers like to scan through content until they find something of interest, so clear and easy to use information is a must. Images, again, help us a great deal here, by breaking text and enticing users to keep on reading. More on scannable content in a previous post.
4. Summarize. There’s an old proverb say ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, and I couldn’t agree more. Images are great for not only diverting visitors to your post, but to also convey a post’s entire essence and message. So, just like a good title, a well picked image can summarize your post. By doing so, readers know what to expect and will keep reading your post until their needs are satisfied.
5. Relevancy. Images help better communicate your message by visually stimulating the reader to associate the image with the text. They can drastically thin the line between readers and bloggers, by reinforcing the writing; thus a good combination of writing (extra marks if you use a familiar, open tone) and well picked images, will amplify the emotion your post will carry out into your readers, and by doing so it will greatly improve their sense of connectivity and empathy, both key ingredients for a popular blog. A simple Apple logo when you’re talking about the new iPhone 3G or a picture of a delicious dish, when you’re talking about a food recipe, can really make a huge difference.
   
6. Learning. When how-to or tutorial posts are concerned Images, in my opinion, have to indispensable. Screenshots, sketches, doodles, step by step photographs, all contribute to the learning experience of a user and are a must if a post if to become popular and, most of all, understood.
7. Relaxation. Reading text on a screen is a lot different from reading text on conventional platforms like paper and other ‘material’ outlets. The main reason behind this is the fatigue Internet users are exposed, as opposed to common magazine or book readers, simply because our eyes are highly exposed to tiresome radiations from the PC display. Try reading a 300 page ebook and an equally long regular, paper book; the difference is startling. Providing your visitors with something that eases their reading will significantly improve the on-page experience and, in term, will lead to lower bounce rates, as well as ‘faithful readers’ conversion rates.
8. Aesthetics. Just like a good design can make a blog look beautiful and easy on the eyes, so can some images turn a blog post from just another boring old blurp into a true gem, and in the process help improve the overall aesthetics and user experience of the blog.
9. Search Engines. Some of you may not know this already, but images hold a really important SEO role. Not only well optimized images can improve your rankings for your overall, conventional content, but they also bring traffic of their own, through the specialized images searches. Sure, some will argue the traffic from Google images is plain useless, visitors only sticking around only to see or download a photo. I beg to differ. On a music blog, I co-own, half of the search engine traffic comes from Google Images; that’s well in the tens of thousands. With a CPM based ad network behind you, those visits can convert into a pretty penny, and if we take a look at how the visitors convert into actual readers, the numbers don’t look as grim as we might expect. Most people just quickly double click on an image in Google, so they skip through seeing the content with which the image is in context, but there’s a good chunk of users as well who prefer to click just once and check out the rest of the related content.

Where to Find Images?

Photo by The lookbook

Finding the right image for your blog post can be a bit more difficult then it seems. Personally, I take a great deal of time looking for the perfect pictures suitable enough to go well with the post. At first I used take even two hours of my time, going through hundreds of photos until I found the perfect one. Now, it only takes me about 20-30 minutes to come up with the pics, as you’ve already stacked a good amount of source from where I can find good photos and also I’ve thought myself where and how to look.

Most bloggers use the o-so-common Google Images as a means of image research for their blog posts, by going through the delicate process of querying in a keyword and clicingk on the first results that meets their eyes. Seriously now, you should know that using Google to find images for your posts is not by far a recommended solution, not necessarily because of the quality (although images there tend to be randomly unprofessional), but rather because of the copyright issues. You see, among the millions of the images indexed by Google, a good chunk of those are protected by copyright, and can’t be used without strict permission. If you don’t believe me, go to Google and try searching for a pic. Here’s what you get on the side: “Images may be scaled down and subject to copyright“.

So, you see, Google Images can prove to cause quite a bit of trouble and hassle. Where to find good, and, most of all, free images then?

My favorite source for finding images for LAOB is none other then Flickr. A social photo sharing community that’s home to millions of amateur/professional photographers and artists alike. The quality here can truly be incredible, and you can be sure you can always find something of quality that fits your needs. You only need to know where to look and have patience. I won’t go any further in the process of finding images on Flickr, because Skellie already did a very job on it a while ago. If you’re interested, head over to her blog and read her comprehensive guide to finding and using incredible Flickr images.

A quick note, though. Not all Flickr images are free to use. Some users can choose to protect their photos under Creative Commons and prohibit their use. Don’t worry, if they’re protected, you won’t able to download, nor hotlink the respective photos, if you’re feeling tempted to use them. Also, Flickr has the option of searching only through copyright free images, so there’s another thumbs up to use the service. More about this on Skellie’s guide.

The problem with Flickr, however, is that the photos there tend to be a bit too artsy. Blogs that tackle on more mundane subjects, like business, cars, fashion etc., might feel more at home using stock photo imagery. The thing is stock photos are notorious for being outrageously expensive, going into the thousands of dollars mark, just to use a single photo. There’s plenty of stock photo websites, that offer free imagery, though. Bellow you can find just a few awesome free stock photo that I, along with thousands of other bloggers, use every day.

• stock.xchng (the undeniable leader)
• Stockxpert
• Yotophoto
• Photoree
• InMagine
• One Stock Photography

If you’ve found the above list somewhat limited, check out this awesome list of 100 free and legal sources to download images.

How to Properly Use Images In Posts

Photo by mannover

Adding an image to a blog post is easy-mode, but to actually add something that enhances the value of a post and improves it’s quality, from multiple points of view, requires a bit of an effort. A harmony between the text (with all the necessary formating, for maximum performances) and photos is necessary so that you may create an even flow between the two, that which eventually provide the ultimate reading experience.

Oh, I hope I haven’t scared you too much. It’s actually very simple really. After all, we’re just talking about adding some images. I don’t have to be the next Picasso to make a post look attractive or interesting. Shoots, you don’t even have to a developed sense of aesthetics, as long as you follow a few guidelines and keep some things in mid when choosing the perfect photos for your posts.

• Relevancy. Of course, when picking an image for your post it has to be related to the subject at hand. If you’re doing a post about gardening, a photo of a particular flower or, I don’t know, vegetable would be suitable. Just look at most of my blog posts, and you’ll soon notice how each image is tied to each post’s subject. It’s a no brainer really. However, you don’t necessarily need to put related images, it’s not a rule. I sometimes like to post random photos in my blog posts, but they’re usually so spectacular and so beautiful, that people not only look over the fact that they’re not relevant, but they actually enjoy them.If you using lists or writing a whole paragraph about a new service, company or product, it’s recommended you also put a small icon or logo representing the current subject you’re writing about. This greatly helps the reader better assimilate your content, by making it easier to understand, thanks to the graphic-text correlation. An easy to read text is a pleasure, and that’s something we should all look after in our posts.
• Positioning. This is very subjective, and I’ve found people have different photo positioning habits, much like anything else. I, for one, prefer to start off every post with an image. It grabs my readers’ attention from the very start and entices them read further. Again, that’s just how I like to roll, after many weeks of experimenting with positioning. Some use images to great effect by positioning them right after a few paragraphs and keep doing it as the text progresses. The logic behind this is to use images to keep attention, not monopolizes it, so that the text and subject is the main stage. Either way, I suggest you experiment and find your own style.

  Generally the most widespread post image positions are either left/right corner rectangle images or big/flat images right after the title (like I use to do).

• Multi-imagery. Is it recommended to use more then one image in a post? Well, for me, the more the merrier, as long as you do it with a keen sense of moderation. If you’re articles average about 500 words per post, I’d say one image is enough. If you happen to write larger pieces or elaborate essays, it would be a good idea to add more images along the post, as it will greatly help stimulate the attention span of readers. Also, as far as lists are concerned you can always use a different image for every bullet point or subheading.
• Size. Now, this depends on how your blog theme handles posts width, but generally you’re free to use images of all shapes and sizes, as long your respect your themes CSS boundaries. Again image sizes will vary a lot. For example, I like to post my images large, as wide as the post itself. I like it this way, because for one it really looks good, and then there’s that thing about attention span. Bigger means more interesting and more interesting actually means more readable. Don’t over-react though and don’t use images larger then they have to.

  When you’re writing about a company, in example, there’s no need to stretch it’s logo all over the damn display. A simple 150x150px pic will more then suffice.Be careful about your photos’ clarity. Make sure they’re of the right resolution and not pixelled out. Look at the ratio between the height and width of an image, and make sure they’re in correct aspect ratio.

• Storage. This is a somewhat delicate subject. Basically, you can split bloggers into two; those who upload the images on their own servers and those who upload or hotlink (embed an image from another URL) from external sources. Both come with advantages and disadvantages, and it’s only up to you to decide what is your favorite solution.

  There’s free services like photobucket or the highly popular Flickr, that allow you to upload as many pictures as you want on their servers (maybe not Flickr, you put a maximum of 100 photos, afterwards you have to pay 25$/per year) and then simply hotlink the pics in your posts. What you gain? Well for starters you save a lot of, lot of bandwidth, a growing issue among bloggers lately.

  If you’re self-hosted, on your own domain and server, you can upload the images on your own server. What you get? Well, for one thing you’ve got full control over your own stuff, and not at the mercy of some third party. I’m sure many of you have already hotlinked images from other websites; tell me this then: how many times did some of your images disappear? I thought so. Then there’s highly important issue of SEO, that’s really not worth neglecting. Images can bring a great deal of search traffic to whoever’s hosting them, so if you’re ready to kick away a bunch of traffic, you better use Flickr.

• Bandwidth. Whether you’re using your own server or some other form of third party storage, you should be careful about it’s size in KB. A lot of people around the wold have limited bandwidth and have to pay for every excess KB they download. Make it easier on them and on your server, and pick an image as small in memory size as possible, if you can, optimize it. Use only .jpg and .png. Use .gif only if it’s strictly necessary, as they tent to occupy a lot of bandwidth and are low quality of well (we all like to party like it’s 1999, but not on the Internet).
• Composition. You can basically use images containing whatever coloring and composition, but there are some exceptions. Stay away from too extravagant images, that are packed with too much color and lighting. Imagine having your blog posts look like a teen’s myspace page. Also, if you’re using a post background other then white, you’re gonna have to face some extra issues as well. You’ll probably have to take an extra step further to find images with appropriate background or style them yourself, which will lead to some severe time loss. You could always try using .png images, that use same background as the one you’re posing on, but good luck finding suitable ones.
• Credit. It’s a wide known issue that copyright can be a huge hassle for bloggers of both side of the fence, those who own them and those who publish them further. Be careful and don’t blindly post any image. Check it’s copyright and eventually ask the author or source for permission of use. It’s a lot of trouble, I know, but it might get you out of a lot of trouble. Read more about how to protect and enforce your blog’s copyright in a previous post.

  Anyway, there’s an unwritten law among bloggers everywhere that basically states for anything that you take from another blogger, be it an idea, a news item, a story, an image, whatever, you have to properly credit them with a linkback. In the case of images, I just like to include a small link underneath every photo crediting the authors, usually from Flickr.

• Processing. You can either post an image as you get it, in its default state or you can take it a step further and process it a bit. The most common things bloggers usually do is they crop and resize the images. Then, of course, for those a bit more skilled there’s always styling (you can make a pic black and white, add grunge effects, add frames etc.). If you’re looking to be a bit more professional with your posts, you can always describe your photos with a small caption under them (something like ‘Photo of Barrack Obama speaking in front of Congress’). Recommended tools: Photoshop and GIMP (for open source fans).
• SEO. A lot of bloggers are really wind up about their search engine traffic and go to great lengths to improve their rankings and overall SEO, but what most of them neglect is images search engine traffic. I’ve already talk about it a some lines above, so there’s no need to go over its benefits again, but what’s important to note is to pay some special attention to it.

  With a minimum of effort and attention when you upload your images you can have a bunch of your images rank high for competitive keywords in image searches.There’s basically five (well six, if you count the CSS class field) important elements that characterize an image in xHTML. There’s src (which is your image’s actual URL), width, height, alt text (the text that appears when you go over an image with your mouse) and title. Of these, when uploading an image, src, width and height and automatically complete by WordPress, with only alt and title remaining to be complete. How convenient, right?

  First thing’s first, though. Before you upload an image be sure to rename it from 41240j1.jpg or whatever its called, into keywordname.jpg. For example if you’re writing an article about U2 and also want to add an image featuring the band, make sure, before you upload it, that you rename it appropriately; something like U2.jpg or U2theband.jpg will work perfectly. This will take about 5 seconds to do. Like I said, WordPress will automatically take care of the width, height and src when you upload or hotlink and image, it’s then time to take care of the title and alt text fields. Just complete the respective field the same way you renamed the .jpg, with the keyword and you’re set. The whole process takes about 30-60 seconds per image, but the benefits it brings will clearly out-weigh the minimal effort you landed.The most important aspects you should take in consideration, when SEO for images is concerned, are the alt text and the relevant content around your image. So, if you’re looking after ranking high for a particular image keyword, you should also concentrate on a keyword rich environment around it, much in the same way you’d do with conventional SEO.

Images, Turning Blogging into Art

Photo by antonio burguet

A blog post, no matter how well written, without a good, representative image next to it is just plain. It’s like food without salt, like life with fun. Just look at one of the most raging phenomenon’s on the web now, photo-blogging or blogging only in photographs. Then end result can be just stunning (see Kathleen Connally’s photoblog).

Simply put, images provide a whole different reading experience to the average blog aficionado, and it’s our ‘job’, as bloggers, to give our readers the time of their lives during their stay.

Thoughts and opinions on blog images? Do you use them? If no, why not? Curious here.

Thing is there are, literally, thousands of such ad networks that promise to turn your blog into a true money maker, but at the end you only end up with a few dollars in your pocket or either way, not a respectable amount anyway. You see, ad brokers are all ripping us off! Just about all of these ad networks perceive a very high commission, mostly around the 50% mark. Just think about it for a second, that means half of what you really make goes in other people’s pockets. Better then nothing at all, right? Wrong!

I won’t lie, on my other blogs I use a few such ad networks, but only on the blogs that are still in the beginning, and really don’t have any other options, or only to handle secondary ad inventory on the more established ones, but not even that lately. What I use to monetize my blogs then? Simple, I just sell ads directly to advertisers. There’s no more commission and I get to charge my own prices. I’ve just cut out the middle man.

Pros and Cons of Direct Advertisement

Photo by Niko

Like anything in blogging, there’s a benefits and disadvantages ratio, who’s balance varies from blogger to blogger. For me it clearly weighs more on the benefits side, but I’ve seen a lot of people who’ve been less successful with direct advertisement, as opposed to conventional monetization. Actually let me point out that while I consider direct ad sales to be the most optimal, efficient and profitable solution for monetizing a blog, I don’t believe it works in all cases. It’s your call, you decide how to monetize your ad space, but I recommend you at least jungle a bit with private and direct ad sales.

Advatages of direct ad sales:

• More revenue. This is really a no brainer. As I’ve mentioned If you sale advertisement directly, to potential advertisers, you won’t have to worry about any more commissions or processing fees and thus your revenue might potentially double.
• Ad rate flexibility. There’s no ad broker to decide what’s the best price tag for your advertisement spaces, you and only you can now decide what’s the most fair price, for both you and the advertiser. This of course is firstly tied with the first point, because this way you’ll be able to actually charge more then what you used to make, with conventional monetization options and thus, again, increase your revenue.
• Control. You now decide what kind of advertisement appears on your blog. If you feel that a specific ad isn’t suitable for your readers or you don’t want to be associated with a specific product, you can always refuse their offer of advertisement. When you’re working with ad network you have a very limited control over whatever kind of advertisement gets displayed on the blog.
• Targeting. Since you can control whatever ad gets through, you can now have the option to choose the ads most relevant to your content and readers. How many ads about pirates have you seen on auto blogs? I know I’ve seen enough and I also know the readers aren’t too fond of them. If you’re using CPM (cost per thousand impressions), as a monetization method, most networks will display general ads on your blog; only the more exclusive networks that pay very well, but at the same time have high requirements from behalf of the publishers (200-300k uniques/mo), have really nice and targeted ads. When you’re using direct ad sales, you’re in complete control over what kind of advertisement gets through, so this way you can now have clean and targeted ads, without having to work with a big ad broker.
• Consistency. One you get a few advertisers rolling in the first weeks/months, you’ll be well on track with your blog, financially. You won’t have to depend anymore on so many exterior factors, like traffic, CTR or even luck. It doesn’t matter how many clicks your ad get or how many sales you make; as long as you signed a month to month/quartet to quarter (or whatever period) partnership with an advertiser, these won’t matter any more. Thus you’ll have the security of knowing you finally have a consistent income, that doesn’t hazardously fluctuate every month.
• Networking. When you sell private ad spaces on your blog and start getting in contact with advertisers, you’ll naturally start making relationships with them, relationships from which both sides can benefit in the future. The clearest example that I can give, is how I managed to sign a very convenient (let’s say twice as much as I’d ask for in normal conditions) advertising deals on two of my blogs, thanks to a person from the inside with whom I was having regular business contacts. The deal is standing even today, and we’re up for a renegotiation of the contact in a few weeks. You can bet I’ll ask for more, if it isn’t possible, there’s no biggie, we’ll just move on in the same condition (I’ll detail more about how much to charge a bit further).
• Payment flexibility. If you’re using conventional ad networks on your inventory, you’ll most probably get paid a fix amount every month, at a fix date. When you”re selling the ads yourself you can have more ‘unofficial’ talks with your advertisers, so that you can both decided which date is most suitable for payment. I know a few people, who rely on the money from their blogs as their sole or major source of income. They have to pay their bills at the end of the month, but most either get paid early in the month or at the middle, if they’d sale private ad sales, they can have a chat with the advertiser and get the payment date around a period more suitable.
• Diversification. “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” is what any respectable marketer will tell you, when you approach him with a business plan and here’s where private ads get interesting. Alongside private ads, you can also run other conventional ads (adsense, adbrite etc), unless the private advertisers don’t have anything against it of course, and thus add a second stream of income, but the thing with direct ad sales is that you probably won’t be selling them just to one advertiser, you’ll most probably have 3 or 4, so again the diversification branches even further. The key is to not rely on a single income stream, because you’ll expose yourself to a ton of vulnerabilities. If you’re depended on a single source of income, then you risk getting no income at all, if, God forbids, that respective cash venue fails. (Photo by Straws pulled at random)

Disadvantages of direct ad sales:

• Finding advertisers. This is the biggest impediment bloggers face when trying to sell advertisement on their blogs. The hunt for potential advertisers can be grueling at times and a repetitive negative answer can discourage most into abandoning the idea of selling their own ads entirely. It’s important to stand steadfast and to not give up. It’s hard till you get your first set of advertisers to cover your inventory, after that it’s all down hill from there and if you’re pretty famous or if your blog has a large readership you won’t have to worry about this altogether, because the advertisers will be contacting you and not the other way around.
• Responsibility. When you sell private ad sales, you become even more responsible for what kind of advertisement gets across the blog. You might advertise a product that is phony or that might scam your readers, your credibility will then suffer a great deal. Be careful to what you say yes, do a good background check on your advertisers, test their products, if any, and only then give the OK.
• Time. Besides the time you spend hunting down advertisers, which can be a lot, depending from blog to blog, you’ll also spend a decent amount of time, at the end of each month or quarter, renegotiating deals or rearrenging ad placements, if an advertiser isn’t pleased of its results. Add them up and you can end up with a lot of time ‘wasted.’ I don’t know how much of an argument this is, because it’s in your best interest to take your time in choosing the right advertisers and negotiating deals for maximum leverage, but some find it too much of a hassle and abandon the idea of selling ads on their own.

When Should I Start Selling My Own Inventory?

Photo by Steve Webel

As you can see above, you’ll find that the benefits clearly outweigh the disadvantages (at least in my opinion), but that doesn’t mean it will 100% work for you too. Truth is not all blogs can sell their own ad space on their own, especially the small ones. I’ve seen a decent amount of blogs who’ve actually performed better with PPCs and CPMs, then with private ad sales. It all depends on your niche.

A seemingly small blog of around 100-200 visitors a day in a tight, compact niche (a blog about, let’s say, baseball cards) quite possible may be able to get more and even better paying advertiser, then a bigger blog traffic wise, of around 500-1500 uniques a day, in a more saturated niche (i.e. Tech). That’s because the smaller blog, being in a more exclusive niche, will have little competition among other blogs for advertisers and in term the later will also have limited places to pitch their services. A smaller niche, also means more targeted and interested readers and this also highly appeals advertisers, as well as bloggers (the more tighter the niche is, the more money you can get from advertisement).

Now, if we take the more popular blog we’ll see that even though it gets a lot more traffic it will be less on demand among advertisers. That’s because there are hundreds, maybe thousands of similar blogs in the respective niche, and consequently the advertisers can afford to, not only be picky, but pay less as well. The simple laws of supply and demand apply here as well, as you can very well see.

So, the only one that can answer the ‘big’ question is none other then you. It’s all very relative from niche to niche, so there’s no universal benchmark in terms of traffic, subscribers or whatever from which you can there on start selling. It’s only up to you. To actually give some advice on the matter, I’d suggest you start selling your own stuff, when you’ve at least somewhat established yourself in your niche. This means getting a decent amount of traffic and subscribers . You’ll know when your established when you see the amount of commitment at the blog (comments and private emails), linkbacks and feedback from fellow bloggers in your niche.

How to Find Advertisers?

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Because this is the biggest obstacle bloggers looking to sale ads on their own face, I think a few pointers and guidelines, on how to properly and efficiently find the best advertisers, is welcomed. If you’re a dot com mogul you can skip over this, for the rest of us here’s what you can do:

• Check the competition. Actually ‘competition’ is kinda a harsh word, more like neighbors, because I don’t like to think of other blogs as competitors, we all stand to gain more, if we help out each other. Anyway, check out the more established blogs in your niche and look at what kind of advertisers they have. If you like them, visit their homepage and drop them an e-mail in which you explain what your blog is all about and how they can benefit from advertising on it. Be sure to lay down stats and testimonial. This doesn’t work very well, but you should catch a few nevertheless.
• Don’t aim too high. Don’t start e-mailing Adobe and Microsoft to advertise on your blog, it won’t even get read, instead go for smaller, more accessible advertisers, like niche shops or various other establishments that offer services.
  
• Seek out in time. A lot of advertisers have fixed budgets, planed over periods of time, like quarters, semesters or biannual. If you’ll e-mail advertisers in full season, you’ll probably get hit by a negative answer, with an ‘exceeded budget’ advocation. Instead when you find a potential advertiser, try to e-mail them around major holidays (Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, 4th of July, Halloween etc.) and the beginning of summer and winter. I’m not saying you should wait until then to email and advertisers, on the contrary, but if you’re around these specific time frames do it ASAP.
• Make an ‘Advertise here’ page. By making a special section at your blog solely dedicating to pitching your services to potential advertisers, you’ll both increase the chances of getting advertisers, among those visiting your website, and also let people know exactly what your blog can offer and why it’s a suitable choice for advertising. An excellent advertising page should include:
  • Traffic stats. This includes the number of unique visitors and page views you get every month, RSS readers, newsletter subscribers and so on.
  • Demographics. Knowing what types of people visit your blog is very important for an advertiser, so be sure to include the age of visitors (group them in age sections. i.e. 13-18: 15%, 19-35: 34%, 35-49: 50% etc.), time spent on the blog, the countries where they come from (you can display the top 5 for commodity), gender and as a bonus you can also add miscellaneous buying habits (if you’re running a music blog you could state the average visitors buys 5.6 records a year or that 1 in 5 visitors play an instrument). The easiest way to make up demographics is by holding polls (Quantcast is also awesome for tracking demographics). Also be sure to use a good stats service like Sitemeter or Google Analytics.
  • Third-party data. I don’t give too much though to them, but a lot of advertisers seem to care what Alexa, Technorati or Compete rank you blog has and also let’s not forget about the ever controversial Google Page Rank. There’s nothing wrong in adding them too.
  • Ad options. Be sure to let advertisers know what kind of ad placements they have at their disposal. Here’s a quick overview on the major monetization options you can handle over to advertisers: banner ads (the oldest form of online advertisement, it’s still very valid and reliable today), text links (the #2 earner for my blogs), website or service reviews (very popular lately), RSS ads (You can put advertisement in your feed as well, although your readers won’t be too happy about it), newsletter ads (professional newsletter today tend to have a clean magazine layout, that also leave room for ads. If you have a few hundred subscribers you can easily monetize the newsletter space.).
  • Ad packages. If you’re looking for longer and more stable deals, it would be wise of you to offer premium packages, with cost reductions. I.e. You can offer special low cost deals, if an advertiser, for say, buys 3 or 6 months ahead or if he buys multiple ad spaces. Also if you own a few blogs you can make a special ad package for the whole network, where you can deliver ads at a much lower cost then they would normally cost, if the advertiser would choose to buy ad slots individually on every blog. This way both the blogger and advertiser get to win; the advertiser gets his ads across a larger readership, at a lower cost and the blogger gets his inventory filled. If you don’t own multiple blogs, you can always team up with some other blogger, with whom you’re in closer relations and own like-minded blogs, and form a network from there.
  • Ad map. Be very specific where the actual ads will get displayed on the blog, be it in the header, on top of the sidebar, bellow the content, between posts etc. The location of an ad is directly proportional with its reader awareness level (this is why advertisers are so interested in placements) and, of course, its cost. By creating a premium ad space, located right above the fold for maximum exposure, you’ll be able to find more advertisers and also charge more. What I’ve seen many blogs do is they make a “heat map” of their blog’s advertising space, clearly showing where each ad goes. Quick example here.
    
  • Keywords. A lot of advertisers are looking for targeted and relevant traffic, that they can later convert into sales for their products, and, arguably or not, the best kind of such traffic is the ones from search engines. If you’ll mention in the ad pitch page, that your blog is ranked high for a set of particularly competitive keywords, you’ll more then spark some attention.
  • Testimonials. General feedback about your blog’s advertising quality is very important for credibility. If an advertiser is satisfied by the services you provide, you could politely ask him if he’d mind giving a testimonial. You can also mention here quotes or links to favorable reviews of your blog.
  • Pricing; yes and no. Whether you should also include your rates, in your advertising page, or not is highly debatable. By adding the pricing for each ad type on your blog, you’re bolting down the numbers. This is OK if you’re after a fix income level, some people (and in term advertisers) even this more professional. I, however, prefer to keep my ad rates out of the open, because I feel like fix ad rates aren’t that good. Think of yourself as an advertiser, you see a blog you like and which fits your company’s profile, and then you decide to inquire about a possible partnership. You first head to the advertise page and you feel like the rates are too high; you abandon the blog and move further. Now if the rates weren’t displayed the advertiser would take the time to contact the blog owner or the person in charge of marketing the blog, who in term will get in touch with the advertiser. A connection is now already made. Even after the blogger presents the advertiser with his ad rates and the latter isn’t happy about them, you can still do something about it. You can lower them, you can offer a bonus, you can extend his period if he buys now and so on, the important thing is that you’re open for negotiation.
  • Contact info. Of course you’ll have to give the advertisers means to get in touch with you, I’ve had a few laughs when I saw some really consisting advertisers who wanted to advertise on a blog, but didn’t know how to get in touch with the respective blogger, but they wanted so much to advertise on the respective blog, that they left comments on a post inquiring to do so. At least throw in an e-mail at the end, people!

• Search engines. Do a search in Google for the a keyword you believe best describes your blog, like “baseball cards” or “latest gadgets,” browse a bit through the first 5-10 pages until you come up with a suitable list of potential advertisers (for maximum results also add at the end of each set of keywords, something like “shop,” “network,” “affiliates” and so on). Then you can just e-mail them. The more precise and targeted the keyword, the more niched the advertisers will be, so using laser precise long tail keywords may prove wise.
• Forums and marketplaces. Webmaster discussion boards have always proved to be a good place to do business. Most have specialized marketplaces, built specifically for advertisement and general internet business. Great places to look for advertisers are Digital Point, Site Point Forums + Site Point Marketplace and Webmasters World.
• Write about it. Just publish a blog post in which you clearly and plainly state to the whole blogshphere that your advertising doors are wide open to anyone interested. This is great for a head start on getting advertisers for those first crucial months.

How to Price My Ad Inventory?

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This is a question that you should righteously raise. Ask too much and you might scare them off, ask too little and you risk underpricing yourself, and in term lose money. When it comes to selling private advertisement, I’m pretty steadfast in how I price advertisers, namely I never sell myself short and neither should you.

If you’re the one who’s contacting the advertisers, you may need to lower the bar a bit, because it’s clear you’re the one who needs them and not the other way around. If the advertiser is the one who first contact you about a possible collaboration, you should always try to make the most out of it and ask a bit more then your normal benchmark.

Don’t get too over ecstatic about an offer either, no matter how big the promised sum may seem. Take some time to think it over and let it breath. This way, although you may find yourself biting your finger nails in anticipation (It’s a weird feeling when you know you’ve got something great just waiting to happen), you won’t seem ‘desperate’ or something either. Still, how much to ask? Here’s some ideas on how you can create an income benchmark, from which you can then raise or lower your rates accordingly.

• Use conventional ad networks. That’s right, a good, sound way to know how much to charge your advertisers is to use conventional options like PPC and CPM networks or even affiliate networks (that pay by sale, lead commission). Keep them for one month and see how much you make, be sure you monitor every ad zone. After a month, multiply that income by 2 and you’ve got yourself a fair rate.
• Check out the competition. Again, looking over your neighbor’s fence is a good call to make yourself an idea on how advertising money revolves around blogs in your niche. Check out similar blogs to yours and head over to their advertising page. A lot of blogs have one and most of them have their ad rates on, along with their traffic details. Compare the respective blog’s general stats with yours and then look at its ad rates; this will definitely help you get a sense on how the market’s going in your niche. Of course each blog is free to set its own price tag, but when you’ve got all the blogs similar to yours with lower ad rates, guess where the advertisers will go?
• Various marketplaces. A few lines above I mentioned marketplaces as a good mean to find advertisers, but seeing how marketplaces have become very popular among bloggers, it’s a great place to study the market too. Check out the various threads and auctions you might find in the marketplaces and analyze how bloggers sell their ad space, and, most importantly, for how much.
• Ask around. Simply asking other people for help, whenever I’m some kind of predicament always seems to work for me, so I don’t see why it should work for you too. As a blogger you probably have at least one or two contacts with other bloggers in your niche. If they have advertisement on their blog, kindly ask them how much they charge, most of the time, depending on your relations, they’ll answer. Moreover you can ask them for a recommendation regarding the pricing of your ad inventory.

Remember to consider all the little and miscellaneous aspects that influence an ads price tag, here’s a quick reminder:

1. Traffic.
2. Demographics.
3. Positioning.
4. Format ( 728 x 90, 468 x 60, 125 x 125 etc. ) and type (animated, static etc.).
5. The third party classes (Alexa, Google PR, Compete).
6. The niche (one of the most important factors).
7. Link popularity (number of quality inbound links).

Final Thoughts

[digg-reddit-me]I think direct ad sales are the ultimate monetization technique, from almost all points of view, including the ever pressing money issue. However, that doesn’t mean you should replace conventional ads altogether, far from it. Play slow and build your direct ad sales steadily, by combining both conventional ad networks and private ad sales, until you can finally afford to use only direct ads.

I don’t like talking too much about making money online (I know see this post has grown way too large) and some of my readers may find this post not to their liking, considering my previous work, however I think I need to again stress out the importance of cutting the middleman from behind your ad doors and how your business can thrive thanks to direct ad sales. Try them out for a few months (it takes lots and lots of patience) and then hit me up with an e-mail, whether it contains a positive or negative answer. I’d like to know, nonetheless. Anyway, thoughts on the subject? Past experiences? I’d love to hear you guys out.

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I’ve always been fascinated by how every man is unique. There’s no two alike in the world, no matter how much they’d physically resemble each other. Even if a person would share 100% of another’s DNA code, I’m positive they’d still be two different individuals, because, although they may look identical, they won’t think the same.

We all have our own consciousness, our own unique thoughts and views around anything that catches our interest and by having an independent mind you’re free to exercise those exact thoughts and ideas in any way you see fit. This is the catalyst for creativity and creativity is one of the main traits that defines uniqueness. So, rejoice fellow bloggers, for you are all unique!

What Makes A Blog Unique

Photo by yein-

There are literally millions of blogs out there. An obvious question quickly arises: what sets your blog apart from all the rest? You might be quick to say that you blog is in a different niche, then other bloggers are, but you have to consider that over the years, almost all of the most common subjects you could possibly think writing about, have already been covered before. So, inevitably, the question returns: what makes your blog unique?

1. Personality. You, me and everyone else knows that you’re unique, but you need to properly express and voice your thoughts when blogging, so that your personality is as obvious as possible. Put your own personal touch into every blog post and whenever you get the chance talk about a personal life experience, that is relevant to the subject at hand. Keeping things semi-formal is a great way in doing so. Think of it as an open letter in which you address everybody, but at the same time you connect with each person individually.

If a post is nicely written, I can usually make a picture of the person who’s written it in my head; this brings me to whole other level with the blogger. Our writing, the way we express our ideas or the ideas themselves, all make a profile of our personality. Think of all the treats, qualities, skills, virtues etc that you possess in real life and try to transfigure them into your writing. It’s pretty difficult, I know, and the only way to do this is to keep on practicing your writing. Let your personality shine!
2. Sincerity. Copying someone else’s style, writing or even content won’t ever get you anywhere. Your just lying to yourself and your readers. By being transparent and sincere in the thoughts you lay down on your blog, you’re actually being… you! And in doing so, you display your personality at its fullest, which in term (as I’ve shown it above) is the first step towards uniqueness in blogging.
3. Confidence. There’s something that’s been really bugging me lately, namely the alarming number of people having self confidence issues. They blame themselves for every little mistake they make, they self-denigrate and under-evaluate themselves and have a total lack of confidence in their own abilities and powers to succeed. This of course can be clearly seen in the blogsphere as well. I’ve met a lot of bloggers who feel their blog isn’t ever going to get successful or that they’re not unique. They don’t believe their writing is special, remarkable or worth reading, but they keep on going because they sorta have a sense of duty to their readers. Keep telling yourself your unique and don’t pay attention to the people who through mud in your eyes. Really, if you’re confident that you are unique and have something of value to add, then you’re half way there on the road towards uniqueness.

Photo by Raimy Sofyan

4. Design. When the superficial side of your blog is concerned, a good design can mean the difference between one in a million and dime a dozen. You want your blog to sport a design that makes a returning visitor exclaim: “hey! I’ve been here before, no doubt.” Your blog’s design represents, to a certain extent, your blog’s content and, of course, you, as a blogger. So if you want to be unique, you need to have a unique design as well. That doesn’t mean you have to spend thousand of dollars on a unique template; you can always grab a free template, like the one I’m currently using by Paul Stamatiou, and customize it a bit. Change the header (the most important part of your design) so that it matches your blog’s vibe and make an original and unique logo, that will, from now on, represent your blog and which you can use to promote your blog.

After you finish applying these two very important steps, you can proceed to more minor modifications, like the themes background, text font, formating and so on. If you’re feeling uncomfortable with making too many modifications yourself you can always opt for some help from one of your more skillful friends or ultimately you can pay for a designer’s services.
5. Competition. If I were to sum the term uniqueness in a few quick words, I’d say that it’s a treat that describes something that can’t be found anywhere else. This should be the first thing on your mind: what can you bring new to the table that your neighbor hasn’t already? Research your competition, check out other blogs and analyze them. First find out what makes them unique, so that you may in term understand what makes your blog unique. Look for anything they might not have tackled. You, as a visitor, have a better critical eye, meaning you can see mistakes and missing features a lot better then the actual owners.That doesn’t mean you should stay away from anything your competitors are doing; if they’re doing something right, there’s no reason you shouldn’t try it. I don’t mean copying either, but rather getting inspired by their model and based on that to create your own version of the respective successful model.
6. Originality. Give course to your creativity and express it in your writing. Don’t be afraid to speak your mind about anything and always be opinionated. To be original you don’t have to reinvent the wheel or something, you just have to put it another point of view. Meaning there’s no problem if your writing about a subject that’s been covered by hundred of other bloggers, as long as you add your own perspective on the subject. That’s originality right there.

Photo by Leviathor

7. Innovation. Uniqueness at its fundamental core, is based around two main principles: originality and innovation. It’s well known that innovation is the catalyst for progress, so it’s very important not just to innovate your individual writing on your own blog, but, in doing so, to strive to, somehow, improve blogging in general. Break your quotidian patterns and start thinking of new ideas on how you can improve anything in particular, in your field of activity and how you can help your readers in a innovative manner. Don’t be afraid to voice even the most scandalously outrageous ideas, you never know what your mind might spit out.

People wanted to burn Galileo Galilei to the steak when he unveiled his astrology theories, claiming the Earth isn’t the center of the Universe, his studies however proved to be inestimable for the progress of science. Of course no one’s gonna go a witch hunt after you, if you happen to say something stupid *sigh. The innovators are the communities’ spearheads, they’re the ones that set the tone for progress. So if you can’t seem to be very good at something (not enough to be remarkable at least), you can always try to come up with something extraordinary, that will bring something absolutely fresh to the scene.
8. Meaningfulness. For your blog to be unique, it has to differentiate itself from all the rest, by giving them a positive and lasting impact. Provide your readers with something to look forward too, something they can’t find at other blogs, be it your original content, features, contests and so on. Your goal should be to entice readers to go back and check if anything new will impact their lives in a better way.
9. Communication. Sure, you know your blog’s unique, maybe a few your readers have already realized this as well, but you need to make the rest believe it too. You need to clearly, but subtly, put all your good cards up front. Make it perfectly clear what your blog’s strong points are and why it’s so special; the best way in doing so is clearly your about page.
10. Memorability. For a blog to expose its uniqueness , as best as possible, it has to stand out and get engraved inside your readers’ head. This can be done a several levels, either through your content, design, personality etc. Maybe the first thing, that will spark a blog’s memorability, is its name. My blog’s name, Lost Art of Blogging, although pretty long, is very generic, easy to remember and most importantly unique. So, building a blog under a generic title, as opposed to lets say your own name (johndoe.com, averagejoe.com), is a lot more recommended, because it helps you blog stand out, that of course if you’re not a celebrity (John Chow etc). I doesn’t even have to mean something, as long as it’s unique and easy to remember (see Flickr, orkut, bebo and so on).

What Makes Your Blog Unique?

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[digg-reddit-me]These are just ten principles, that I consider fundamental, for building a unique blog, but also a unique blogging persona for the author.If you can assure your blog’s uniqueness, success is just a few steps away. We all have it in us, uniqueness that is, we all have one or more characteristics that makes us special, not only in real life, but in blogging as well and it’s only up to us to find it.

What I want to hear now is what you believe makes your blog unique and, if you don’t mind to share, what were the steps you took to achieve its uniqueness.

If you found this post useful or to your liking, please reward it by stumbling, digging or casting a vote on any other social media service you might like to use. Also don’t forget to subscribe to the blog, so you don’t miss out on any other posts.

Commenting on the web is one of the most important factors that lead to the Internet social revolution, from the last few years. In the not so distant past, commenting and public social interactions on the web was more or less exclusive on forums and was limited by a series of complications. When blogs first became popular in the early 2000s, they were hailed and highly praised, not for their particular concept, but rather for their social innovation; a never before seen connectivity between the readers and the article authors. Readers could now freely and easily interact with the authors, publicly share and discuss the post’s ideas and form a bond with the blogger. In short comments from behalf of the readers made blogs what they are today.

Since then, a lot of things have changed on the web and in the blogoshere particularly. Commenting has also more or less changed, thanks to the ever expanding issue of spam, that’s lead to steadily decline of quality in blog comments.

Commenting For Bloggers

Photo by John Suler

As bloggers, commenting on blogs should be a top priority for building and expanding your reach, so that your voice may be propagated to as many minds as possible. Let’s not forget the huge networking possibilities as well. I’ve managed to get in touch with so many bloggers, who eventually became my friends (both on the internet and in real life), thanks to blog commenting that I’ve long gone lost count.

It’s been used as a promotional tool for years and guess what, it still works like a charm. However if you truly want tot harness the fruits of blog commenting you have to know how to properly do it. Bellow I’ll lay down a few unwritten principles of proper blog commenting, that are based more on common sense, then on any particular social skill.

1. Consistency. Most bloggers who comment on other people’s blogs, do it only with the interest of getting quick traffic and then they’re never to be seen again. This is by far no way to do it and you should avoid hit and runs as much as possible. Forming a bond with the blogger, like any other relationship, takes time. This means you have to regularly comment on the respective blog. If you get a reply to your comment or get directly addressed, be sure to comment back. However, this doesn’t mean you should comment on everything a blogger posts. Just comment on anything you truly and sincerely find interesting; don’t do it just for the sake of commenting.
2. Value. If you want your comments to get you new readers, brand recognition and awareness, then you have to make them count. A comment like “excellent post” or “thank you!” won’t get you anywhere and will basically only waste your time, but the sad thing is it will waste other people’s time too. To make valuable comments you have to be contributive to either the article in cause, adding further points or elaborating on those already present, or to the discussions already based in the comments section. Actually I’ve read a lot of blog posts who’s comment section contained more valuable information then the actual posts itself; this says a lot.I, as well as many other fellow bloggers, greatly appreciate thoughtful comments. It shows that you, as the commenter, spent a good chuck of your time to read my post and then discuss it, in an intelligent and constructive manner. So whenever I get such a comment, I nearly always check his blog out in return, read it and if I find anything interesting, I immediately comment. I know this a time consuming process, but this is how it’s properly done, if you want to build a successful blog and build lasting and fruitful relationships with other bloggers.
3. Personality. Be sincere and personal with your comments. Remember that comments are a lot less formal then regular posts; this is the place where your true personality should shine and where you can build better relationships with the blogger. I didn’t mention that comments are awesome networking tools for nothing. So to build relationships you obviously have to build and showcase your presence. This means commenting on all the blogs with the same name, preferably your real name, not your pseudonym or blog name (and definitely not with a keyword name, that’s lame). Also the way you write in your comments, has to evidentiate your personality; acting as natural as you can is recommended.Anonymity is really common among Internet folk, as it gives a sens of protection against any kind of repercussions that might follow their actions; it’s a shield against responsibility. However, anonymity is not very well seen, with good reason too. I for one like to know whom I’m talking to and if someone anonymously comments on my blog, I certainly won’t take him serious, no matter how good the comment is. Thus it’s extremely important you emphasize in your comments who you are and where you’re from. Also, remember sarcasm, irony or any other expressive action can be pretty hard to spot on the web. People can’t see your facial expression, tone of voice or anything, so your actions, if not well inputed, may be misinterpreted. A quick tip would be to faithfully use emotions, I know I’m quite fond of them :D.
4. Succinctness. To actually get your comment read by the blogger and the rest of the respective blog’s readers, you need to make yourself quick and to the point. Express your ideas and opinions as clearly and briefly as possible.
5. Opinion. One of the basic principles of commenting is expressing your thoughts and ideas around a particular matter. Now you can either agree or disagree with an subject, but that’s not enough; you have to further develop the ideas and build up from there with your own thoughts. Don’t be afraid to voice out anything you disagree with, after all what society what that be if we’d all agree on everything.
6. Politeness. A blog is just like someone’s home, consequently you can’t just barge in and act like you own the place. Be respectful and polite towards, the blogger and the rest of the readers. Ever so often you’ll encounter posts with which you terribly disagree or that make you feel resentful, it’s important not to break out in a foul manner. If you’re going to criticize, do it in a mannerly and orderly fashion, constructively pointing out where you believe he’s wrong. I’d advise you first speak out the points with which you actually agree, if any, before starting listing those with which you disagree. I’m a firm believer of critique. I feel like it’s very important for any individual’s evolution and progression, after all we learn through mistakes and by pointing them out, helpfully, you aid the blogger a great deal.
7. Thoughtfulness. My old man always used to say to me whenever I made a mistake “Think before you act!.’ That little piece of advice followed me for the rest of my life, in the sense that I’ve always been calculated with my decisions, although I love taking the occasional risks. Getting back to blogging, whenever you reply to comment or even e-mail, be sure you’ve thought a lot of things through; if the respective person has damaged your ego somehow, you might get angry and post some nasty stuff. Calm down, take a few minutes to cool down and then get back on the horse. Also never, I mean ever, post comments or most importantly blog posts, when you’re emotionally unstable, angry, drunk or on drugs. The end result may be fun when you post it, but, like a bad hangover, it will sting in the morning.
8. Comprehensiveness. A few lines above, I stated that it’s very important you keep your comments brief and to the point, however they have to be clearly readable as well. How can you expect people to respond to your thoughts, if they can’t figure out what they are? So, make an effort and properly voice your opinions, by using adequate grammar and spelling, as well as language. You don’t want to go all elitist on people and start writing a thesis in the comments area; it will only make people think your a snob.
9. Lawfulness. Most blogs have rules, be it a blog privacy policy or a commenting policy. Be sure to read it and respect them before commenting, to avoid any unwanted complications.
10. Ignorance. Sometimes its just for the best you close your eyes for particular blog posts or comments, you may encounter on the web. Getting involved in conversation, that clearly won’t go anywhere, won’t help one bit. If you find an article that is clearly wrong, dishonest and so on, politely point out that they’re wrong, however if its clear the respective blogger is a total douchebag, it’s for the best you spare yourself the time and effort. Also, you may have probably noticed this, but no matter how beautifully and artfully an article is written, there will always be people to criticize and throw mud. These guys are universally called trolls on the internet and it’s recommended you avoid them. Don’t fuel them by picking on them. If you get provoked, ignore them.
11. Perspective. I mentioned before that you shouldn’t comment on every article a blogger posts, unless you truly believe each of them are interesting, subsequently, however, in addition to knowing when to comment, you need to know where to comment as well. Commenting on big blogs, like boing boing, engadget, problogger and so on, won’t get you very far. Because the blogs are so popular, they naturally get a great influx of traffic and comments, that make you very unnoticeable. Thus commenting on more medium sized, emerging blogs is more recommended; at least you can have a decent conversation with the blogger and fellow readers, unlike having one-way chats in the popular blogs.

Handling Comments On Your Blog

Photo by Mark Witton

I’ve talked about how a commenter should act and behave on a blog, but I think it’s only fair we analyze how a blogger, in term, manages his comments. I always like to think of a blog as home, if you keep that in mind then commentators are your guests. They have to behave and be respectful, to remain in your “home,” however you in return, as the host, have to at least show them the same favors in return. Also there’s always the delicate issue of moderating comments. If you’ve been blogging for long enough, chances are you’ve had your share of haters, trolls, flamer, spammers and overall bad guys, who’s comments more or less profaned your blog’s integrity.

1. Respond to comments. This is one of my golden rules of blogging, that I live by. Lately I’ve noticed that a lot of bloggers don’t really respond to comments, think most of them don’t even read them. This is one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a blogger. Your readers are the one’s that make your blog, not the other way around, otherwise you’re left just with an one way journal. Whenever you get a question via comments or a reader starts a conversation in the comments section, be sure to answer. Don’t leave them in the dark. It’s just plain rude, not to mention that it will greatly hurt your blog. After all to gain a readership, it’s imperative your first build a community of loyal followers. To be a good evangelist in your field, your first priority should be tending to your flock.
2. Show your appreciation. Comments are very valuable to any blog’s growth. The number of comments a blog gets to every post, is viewed by many as a sign of popularity. When a reader leaves a comment, he is actually making an invaluable contribution, by spending a good portion of his limited time. The least you can do is say a simple “thank you!.”
3. Make a comment policy. People can’t universally know what’s allowed and what’s not on a blog, unless you tell them. A set of rules on commenting, is thus very necessary, unless you plan to solely rely on people’s common sense. I say it’s better to avoid any future complications and make one asap. You can view mine here.
4. Publicize your comment policy. After you finish writing up your comment policy, be sure it’s clearly visible to your readers. Put a link to the policy, right in the commenting form, so there’s no doubt about its existence. Ultimately you might as well inform your readers of the blog’s commenting rules through a blog post.
5. Moderate your comments. I don’t necessarily mean you put your comments on moderation, but rather state you keep an eye on everything that gets through. Look for anything suspicious. If spam gets through your akismet (or whatever spam block tool you use), it will very easy to spot, so that’s not really a problem, manually submitted spam, however, can be a little harder to trace. These comments are usually relevant to your content, being manually submitted, however they’re of low quality, hastily written and most of the time they contain a keyword in the author’s name, with a url leading to a devious website (viagra, high cost SEO services, weight lost products etc.)
6. Take care of the trolls. Make sure your blog doesn’t contain any sign of profanity, unrest or otherwise what could be described as bad vibe, in your comment section. This usually happens when controversy is sparked by a discussion in the comments area or by the article itself, the reason isn’t important, what’s important however is how you can deal with the situation. You can either: (photo by lazy eye exposure)
   
   • Ignore. An option is to completely ignore anyone wanting to stir a conflict or flame war on the blog. However this leaves the comments visible to the rest of the readers, who in term might feel offended and ming react, feeding the trolls’ provocations. I don’t like to treat these kind of things indifferently, but I’ve seen a lot of bloggers practicing this method.
   • Delete. Then there’s always the option of deleting malicious and provocative comments, but then you always getting labeled as blog dictator. No matter how stupid that may sound, a lot of trolls get pissed when you delete their comments and get even more effectuated in their quest for a good quarrel., constantly leaving comments, trashing on forums about you or at their own blogs. You blog is your own private property and you may do as you wish with it. If someone trespasses or shows disrespect I see no reason why you shouldn’t offer him the boot. This is my favorite method of dealing with large mouths and trolls, fast and clean.
   • Address. If you’re feeling more diplomatic you can always try to address them and see what’s their beef with you or another reader. Try to mediate the situation, if you succeed, you’ll get a pretty sweet bonus of getting better credentials in the eyes of the community. This can be pretty time consuming though and frankly more or less useless, depending of course on what kind of negative comment it is (criticism or down right bash).

Photo by Automania

Ours blogs are one of our most personal possessions. They’re the place for our thoughts, reflections and views upon the world and reality we live in. Comments are a blog’s complementary part. Comments aren’t made by blogs, they make the blog. I always get a bit dishearten when I see lack of commenting from bloggers, because I know it’s simply foolish no to do so. Many advocate lack of time or, well, laziness, but what they should realize though, is that they’re locking in thoughts. By commenting you are not only sharing thoughts, but also voicing them, and in doing so you free them from your brain’s inner barriers. So, by commenting, you actually further expand your horizons on the commented subject. There’s no good reason, not to comment, so common folks, let me hear your thoughts!

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Last week I wrote about the habit of blogging. There I discussed about habits in general and how they fit into blogging, why gaining the habit of blogging is very important and finally how to eventually grow it. I’d like to think of the respective post as more of a initiation piece, for today’s article, in which I plan to lay down quite a few habits that make a blogger more effective, efficient, intelligent, interesting and well, let’s just say they kinda mark the difference between regular bloggers and, what’s commonly known as, “probloggers.”

I won’t limit the list to only habits, though. In it you’ll also find characteristics and traits, that highly prolific bloggers posses and which we all should strive to adopt.

1. Frequent posting. One of my main advice towards forming the habit of blogging is making and religiously keeping a posting schedule for your blog. Writing often is essential for any blog’s development, as it will keep readers coming back, asking for more, but sadly it also can be a source of stress. Here at LOAB, I post around a post a week. That’s very rare, I have to admit, people have even e-mailed me asking if I could step up my frequency. Thing is I, and you should too, don’t like to post just for the sake of updating daily. If you feel like you have nothing of value to add to your blog or conversation, it’s better to “shut it,” but doesn’t mean you should stretch your sack too long with the posting frequency either. A good blogger has to provide good, original and remarkable content on a regular basis.

2. Proactivity. Things don’t just happen. You have to take matters into your own hand and act. Thinking, planning, brainstorming isn’t enough, you also have to apply. A good blogger is always in control, adapting and managing according to his surrounding environment and is one step ahead of the game.

3. Personal touch. Probably the main reason why blogs have taken off so well, over the yeas, is its high level of connectivity between the author and the readers. You see blogs are meant to be personal, after all they’re considered by many “online journals.” If you strip that away, you’ll find that your blog isn’t a blog anymore. Don’t write in a corporate, over newsy manner, because then you’ll readers won’t feel any sentiment of connectivity. Why should people read your blog and not their local newspaper? True, there’s nothing wrong with objectivity, actually I often encourage it, but subjectivity should never be neglected by a blogger. Give your blog a voice otherwise you’ll loose a lot of edge.

4. Commenting. Now this is a habit that took me a lot of time to form. Anyone that knows a bit how to make his way around a blog, will tell you that commenting is one of the most effective ways to publicize, create awareness and brand your blog, as well as a great way to network and interact with fellow bloggers. Still even when faced with such tremendous rewards, people still refrain from comment; the most often encountered reason being laziness. Here’s how I do it: whenever I read anything interesting on a blog, I leave a helpful comment, in which I share my thoughts on the subject, adding further value to the article and discussion. I try to go tell myself “hey dude, if you took the time to read it, might as well leave a comment too. You know, show your appreciation.”

5. Patience. Blogging is never easy. It requires consistency, determination and a heck load of patience. If you’re a more rushy individual you’ll probably find blogging not to your liking. A blog needs, in general, about 6 months to establish an audience and a loyal following, essential for its development. It’s especially difficult in the beginning when it feels like your writing solely for yourself and no one’s listening. Building a successful and balanced blogs, thus, requires lots and lots of patience.

Photo by zyber

6. Usefulness. I’ve made it clear more then once in my posts, that writing valuable and remarkable articles is the out most importance for establishing your blog and your blogging persona. What defines a valuable post is debatable, but I like to think that the value of a post lyes not in the words itself, but in the ideas on which it’s centered. If a reader gains the smallest amount of knowledge or skill after reading a post, then that’s a valuable blog post right there. The easiest way to attain this level is by being helpful. Put yourself in your visitor’s shoes and try to understand what they want and then give it to them. Plain and simple.

7. Linking. Now this is something really bugs me. I’m talking about people not linking nearly enough. It’s simple folks mention it, link it. It’s not like your paying money right from under your pocket or you’re making a superhuman effort. It only take a few dozen seconds of your life to link to someone’s blog and it won’t cost you a think. On the contrary there’s only benefits. The respective linked blogger might for say return the favor and link back on the next occasion, also you’ll be able to form stronger bonds with fellow like-minded bloggers. You shouldn’t limit yourself to exclusively outerlinking as well, but rather when the occasion arises link to a previous, relevant article from your own blog.

8. Progression. Times are changing, but few environments are so volatile and unpredictable as the online one. Just think about what opportunities and services have died off or popped up over the course of the last few years. A few years ago the web 2.0 was more or less inexistent, now look how much it’s grown. Or take SEO (search engine optimization) as another example; over the last few years it has changed dramatically, becoming more and more social, splitting into conventional SEO and web 2.0 SEO. By working in the online environment you should make a priority out of keeping up with the latest trends, new services and news on the web. Whenever you get an idea, no matter how stupid it may seem, try it out. There’s never too much originality in the world.

9. Diversity. It’s a well known fact, which I don’t have to detail, that focusing upon a niche is highly important, but if you know how to properly diversify your content, you’ll be able to avoid boredom and entertain your readers. Read newspapers, magazines, watch TV, listen to the radio, go for a walk and pay attention to everything around you. Soon enough you’ll get inspired. All things are connected one way or the other, you just have to know where to fill the dots. Take Brian Clark from Copyblogger, as an example. Brian has a ton of posts in which he masterfully combined blogging, copyright and music together, in one eclectic mix.

10. Advance writing. Skellie says her #1 tp for creating better content, is writing posts in advance and frankly I agree 100%. Writing in advance is a habit that’s been very hard to grow and maintain, but when it finally settled in, it eased my life as a blogger tenfold. When you have posts already written, you’re spared from the pressure of deadlines and can then blog without any kind of restrain. Read Skellie’s post for more reasons why advance posting rocks! Remember: forward thinkers are always a step ahead of the competition.

Photo by dbking

11. Proofreading. Mistakes are a normal thing, part of our human nature and of the process of learning. If we didn’t make mistakes we’d be machines, but let’s try to thin them as much as possible. I’m talking about proofreading. It’s highly likely that, right after you’ve finished writing an article, it contains grammar, punctuation or linguistic errors. Some are more obvious then the other, but nonetheless the important thing to keep in mind is to always read your post, at least once, before publishing it. It’s really embarrassing when you make nobrainer grammar mistakes, that could turn an other wise interesting article, into a difficult, unattractive read. Being a non-native English speaker, this has been a lesson I had to learn the hard way, along the years.

12. Notes. Writing down ideas, concepts and pointers has been one of the most helpful and rewarding activity for my blogging endeavors. When your in the business of regularly producing original and thought provoking content, trust me, you need all the inspiration you can get. During a particular day your mind could be invaded with hundreads of ideas, the majority of which, however, get blocked by your subconscious. God only knows how many great ideas, not only web based, struck my mind during a heart beat, but just as well vanished, because I simply couldn’t remember them. I’ve learned my lesson though and now whenever I get an interesting idea in mind, I quickly pull out my phone and start taking notes. Some prefer taking notes on paper, others just make a representative sign on their palm, use whatever method your most comfortable with, as long as you write it down!

13. Rest. Earning a living out of the internet, especially blogging, is a though business. Personally, I’ve had days in which I worked for as long as 12-16 hours. I only managed to work so long and hard because I love what I do, but no matter how much I love my job, it can be extremely tiresome. Knowing when to rest is extremely important and crucial for your productivity as a blogger.

14. Humor. Like I said, blogging from a personal, subjective perspective is highly important for establishing a relationship and sense of well being with your readers. If you manage to add a bit of humor and wit into your writing, then you’ll be able to captivate, entertain and leave your readers asking for more. Everybody’s got a sense of humor, it’s only up to you to decide on how exactly to materialize it online.

15. Persuasion. All good bloggers know how to master the art of persuasion. They know how to write and interact with people in such a manner, that they manage to influence the readers in way or the other. Learning how to be persuasive is important if you want your voice to be felt, however persuasion shouldn’t be confused with manipulation. They’re two very different things. If you want a more in-depth documentation on the subject, I’d definitely recommend Robert Cialdini’s extraordinary book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

16. Goals. By setting an attainable series of goals for your blog each month, you’ll be able to greatly increase your motivation. This really helps finding a purpose and will also speed up your blog’s growth, as you’ll get more and more ambitious as you set ever higher stats. Don’t get discouraged if you fail to meet a month’s goals, just try again next month and then the month after that, if you still fail, until you finally break the milestone. Most bloggers like to share their goals, be them a certain amount of money, subscribers or traffic, with the readers with monthly blog summaries, I however prefer to keep my goals and objectives well hidden. For the long run it’s also a great idea to keep track of your progress. Thus you can make graphs and diagrams of your progress, see where and when your blog experienced a growth/decay in stats, so that you may understand what kind of content and information your readers really want.

Photo by -BigGolf-

17. Confidence. Negativity has no place in blogging. The thought of failure shouldn’t even cross your mind. As long as your patient and confident in your blog and writing, success and readers will not hesitate to follow. Be the most optimistic person you know and you’ll soon reap the fruits of your well based faith.

18. Honesty. Be sincere with both yourself and your readers and show this in your writing. Nobody likes a big old fake, just take a look all these make money online blogs that’ve sprung up like mushrooms and feed people loads of bogus crap. Transparency is essential in building a genuine and respectable online persona.

19. Aesthetics. As blogger you have to know how keep your readers attention. This is primarily done through your writing, that’s why you should always strive to be interesting. However, it’s also important to have a keen sense of aesthetics in your blog posts and over all blog design. Lean how to properly format your posts and try as often as you can to exemplify your ideas through relevant images. Any good publicist will tell you no matter how good a book is, if you don’t have a good cover, it won’t sell as good. Check out my post about scannable content, for more info.

20. Humility. No matter how much you’ve grown as a blogger, don’t ever forget were you’ve started from. Remember it’s your readers that made you who you are today, as an online authority and they can as easily break you down. Be respectful towards your readers and fellow bloggers. Acknowledge your mistakes in public, when they’re pointed out, respond to comments and e-mails, network with readers etc.

21. Balance. A blogger’s life can be pretty busy and stress packed. After all most bloggers either have a full time job or are pursuing a time consuming academic activity. Add a tight blogging schedule to that and you’ve got all the ingredients for a social disaster. Don’t neglect your family, peers or even yourself. Avoid falling into human decay and escape your daily routines from time to time. Regular exercise is a must for keeping yourself healthy, people have become especially alerted on that matter after the now infamous NY TImes death by blogging article. Find the balance within yourself that can bring with it emotional and professional satisfaction.

22. Help. Whenever you get the opportunity lend a helping hand even though you might not have any particular direct benefits. Share your thoughts with other people, teach and offer counsel to those who ask and you’ll soon form bonds with your readers. Also, in term don’t shy away from asking for help yourself. There’s nothing wrong with it. When you have limited knowledge about a particular topic make efforts in documenting yourself, when you’ve still haven’t found the answers your looking for, don’t hesitate to ask for them.

And this about wraps up my list of 22 habits of highly prolific bloggers. The list could go on for ages though, but I decided I should add only the ones I thought would be the most representative and important. Any thoughts on the matter? Any must have blogging habits you have in mind? Do tell.

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“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”

~Aristotle

Blogging demands seriousness, commitment, passion and of course consistency. These are the four essential ingredients, not only towards a successful blogging career, but a healthy and balanced life as well. However keeping up with the fast paced environment, that bloggers are ever so often subjected to, can be a bit of a impediment, especially for blogging beginners and amateurs. Apparently the biggest problem for most bloggers is consistency.

People tend to burn out really fast, after subsequently they passionately burned the midnight oil, during their first weeks, some just days, of blogging. Enthusiasm can be really swell, but the trouble with it is that it dies off pretty fast, so to keep on blogging consistently you have to asimilate it completely. It has to become a part of what you are and do completely, it has to flow throw your veins so to speak, and the easiest way to do that is to form the habit of blogging.

It’s just a matter of simple psychology. Every time your learn something new, your brain tries to connect dots, to form a pathway for neurological activity. If you repetitively perform an action, your brain will soon make behavior patterns and in term will improve your neurological pathway. This is the efficient way your brain handles routine. This is a habit.

Now habits can be good or bad. Smoking for example is bad (guilty), regular exercising is definitely good; but to ask if blogging falls into the later category, I’d have to say I’m not entitled to answer. What I can definitely tell you, however, is that learning the habit of blogging is not an option, but a necessity for any aspiring blogger.

How To Grow The Habit of Blogging

Photo by TOanaM

A good blogger doesn’t turn out over night. You see no one’s born wise and all-knowing, every individual has to walk his own path and learn the ropes on his own. Of course there’s the issue of talent here, which is highly discussible, but I’d prefer not to stray too far from the topic at hand. The main idea here is that through repetition and constant learning you can easily adopt the habit of blogging. That’s easier said then done, however. I feel you, that’s why I devised a few solid ideas on how to turn blogging from an occasional activity into a habit.

1. Read blogs. The easiest way to get in the habit of blogging is to be around them as much as possible. The more you surround yourself with blogs, the more you’ll get used to them and consequently you’ll feel more comfortable around them. Not to mention that readying all those blog posts can provide a lot of inspiration, to fuel your own posts. This way you’ll be able to write blog posts a lot easier, content will seem to come out at its own and thus blogging will soon become a natural thing.
   
2. Make a schedule. A habit requires at least 20-30 days to mildly settle in, so what you need to with blogging is make it a part of your daily life. Making a blogging schedule, thus, seems the best solution. Just reserve a certain amount of time each day, depending on how much time your willing to allocate to your articles. However, that may not be enough. You see habits are sparked by triggers. For example whenever I get out of class, am under stress or after exams I always grab a smoke. Those are just a few triggers that form the habit, so what you need to do is find your own blogging trigger.

   When I first started out blogging, I used my current daily routines as blogging triggers. For example, I usually arrived at home from school at around 1 PM and at about 1:30 PM I’d have launch. This way my personal blogging trigger. Right after I had finished launch I would start blogging uninterruptedly, until I finished my posts. You can choose whatever trigger you like, as long as it’s something that happens daily. Sure, blogging is highly flexible; you can do it at any time and any place as long as there’s an internet connection, but when you what to form a habit out of it, it’s important to limit yourself.

3. Start out small. Don’t get over ambitious with your writing, not right from the start anyway. Start off small, gradually increasing the quality and workload of your posts, until you reach a suitable pace. Otherwise you might risk getting overburned and inconsistent.
4. Track statistics. I don’t necessarily mean blog stats, but rather a form of logging. You can try making a simple spreadsheet, in which you’ll track your daily progress. “Yesterday I wrote a blog post and commented on five blogs, today I wrote two blog posts and commented on ten blogs. Wow, I’m making progress!” Something like that. I’d suggest you print a month’s calendar on a sheet of paper and under each day list how many blog posts and comments you made in the respective day. How will this help? Well keeping track of your habit is highly important for growing the habit of blogging; this way you can both make sure that you both don’t miss a day blogging and also keep an accounting of your progress.
5. Look for motivation. You can’t possibly be successful at anything if your not at least remotely passionate or motivated about it. Just ask yourself why do you blog. Whether it’s just for the pleasure of writing or money or being famous, it doesn’t matter, just as long as it fuels your drive for blogging. A nifty little trick is to write down all the things, no matter how small, that make you blog. This way whenever your in a blogging slump or feel unmotivated, you can quickly review the list and remind yourself why your blogging in the first place.
6. Set goals. I’ve found that setting goals is a great way to keep people motivated and focused. It’s a lot easier to accomplish a task when you’ve actually got something to finish. Tell a thirsty man in the desert there’s no water for 50 miles and he’ll feel discouraged and probably die. Tell a thirsty man there’s an oasis in 100 miles and he’ll defy all odds and probably save his own life.
7. Focus. It’s a lot easier to learn a new habit if you focus and give your complete, unconditional attention to it. Put all other, less important, activities on hold or lighten up the time you dedicate to each, if not possible. Don’t walk in the trap of multitasking. Concentrate on one habit at a time, you’ll need all the energy you can get.
8. Remove all other distractions. In close relation to the above point, it’s highly important you don’t get distracted when blogging. Otherwise you’ll divert from your blogging towards something else, leaving it for a later time. However postponements over postponements won’t get you anywhere and won’t certainly get you in the habit of blogging. Win the battle over procrastination and eliminate anything that might get in your way, like TV, e-mail, RSS, IM even the internet (unplug the damn interwebs once and for all, till you finish at least).
9. Reward yourself. Rewards are great for keeping you motivated. It’s a lot easier to keep on blogging, under a strict schedule, when you’ve got something to look forward to. It’s a case of simple psychology. Remember when you mom told you to first finish your homework and only then go out and play? Blogging will work much in the same way. After you finish writing your posts, have a blast and reward yourself with anything that makes you happy. Do this for every post in the first week, then two just times in the second week and then a couple of times for the whole month. Your brain will soon associate blogging with rewards and this will help fasten the process of assimilating the habit of blogging. Actually, for me, blogging has been one of the most rewarding activities I have ever undertaken.
   
10. Make it fun. You should never take blogging too serious. In all its essence blogging is one of the most fun activities possible, where your turn your passions and thoughts into material writing by voicing them. It’s true however that if you don’t enjoy blogging, you won’t be able to be successful, nor able to grow the habit of blogging. So if you don’t find anything whatsoever fun about blogging, then you should stop right there, because frankly it’s not for you bud.

[digg-reddit-me]Did you manage to get in the habit of blogging? If yes, how did you do it? I’ll soon post a follow-up with a few essential habits for highly efficient and successful bloggers, so be sure to subscribe to my free RSS feed to get the latest heads up. As always if enjoyed this article please show your appreciating by stumbling or saving it on del.icio.us. Thank you!